MARKETING AND PROMOTION

MARKETING AND PROMOTION 

Marketing is the process of spark an interest of potential customers and clients in your products and/or services. The key word in this marketing definition is "process"; marketing 
involves researching, promoting, selling, and distributing your products or services.


Branding is a process of identifying and setting your business name or design that will distinct yourselves from others. 

Pricing is basically setting the right price for your product based on your target market 

Research in this case is the Marketing Research

Strategy also related to Marketing Strategy 

Publicity can be done several ways such as direct marketing, online marketing and social media.

Public Relation is the professional maintenance of a favorable public image by a company or other organization or a famous person.

Sales that is the objective of all these

So if i could break it down into four stages, it would be setting the brand and price based on the target market of your product. Then we move on to researching a strategy to do a massive publicity which include direct marketing, online marketing, and social media. All of these to achieve the high number in sales. Lastly you need good public relation to sustain a good business image. 

Branding and pricing is a part of Market Research. Now we left with Marketing Research and Marketing Strategy.  

Marketing research is a broad term that cover the process of gathering and analyzing data to understand your customer better. While Marketing Strategy involves putting the information you gathered through a marketing research to work.

MARKETING RESEARCH 

THE METHOD

Prior starting a Marketing Research, you need to define the problem at hand, the objective, and the method of the research. Similar to Market Research, There are two types of Marketing Research : Quantitative and Qualitative. The common research technique include surveys, focus groups, or interviews.

THE STEPS

The steps on Marketing Research is by identifying the problem. This task can be tricky sometimes.

“To gather information from a sample representative of the U.S. population among those who are ‘very likely’ to purchase an automobile within the next 6 months, which assesses preferences (measured on a 1–5 scale ranging from ‘very likely to buy’ to ‘not likely at all to buy’) for the model diesel at three different price levels. Such data would serve as input into a forecasting model that would forecast unit sales, by geographic regions of the country, for each combination of the model’s different prices and fuel configurations (Burns & Bush, 2010).”

It is important to properly define the problem since any unjustified adjustment to product can be costly. Coke’s ill-fated decision to change the formula of Coca-Cola in 1985 is a case in point: Pepsi had been creeping up on Coke in terms of market share over the years as well as running a successful promotional campaign called the “Pepsi Challenge,” in which consumers were encouraged to do a blind taste test to see if they agreed that Pepsi was better. Coke spent four years researching “the problem.” Indeed, people seemed to like the taste of Pepsi better in blind taste tests. Thus, the formula for Coke was changed. But the outcry among the public was so great that the new formula didn’t last long—a matter of months—before the old formula was reinstated. Some marketing experts believe Coke incorrectly defined the problem as “How can we beat Pepsi in taste tests?” instead of “How can we gain market share against Pepsi?” (Burns & Bush, 2010).

The documentation of Coca Cola changing their formula in 1985.

Pepsi trying to take advantage of Coca Cola's mistake with 1985 “They Changed My Coke” Commercial

Next step is to identify the objective of the research. A company should choose one particular goal that they want to achieve through a research. Having too many goal can be confusing, and only be resulted on a vague information.  


After you conduct the reasearch using one of the method mentioned above, you could present the data or the solution you have.

Final step is to fix the problem using the solution suggested by the research.

As example, here is the Marketing Research Result of my Tshirt business. 

MARKETING STRATEGY 

Marketing’s goal is to create value for customers which will lead to profitable bsuiness relationships. The marketing strategy addresses exactly that. 

Marketing strategy can be defined as "the total sum of the integration of segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning strategies designed to create, communicate, and deliver an offer to a target market" (El-Ansary, 2006:268).

SEGMENTATION 

A company cannot target the whole market since there are too many niche, character, interest and lifestyle. A company will be more profitable to specialize in some segments. For example, geograhic and demographic segment of people in city, around 20-30 years old. To learn more about segmentation click here   

TARGETING 

After focusing in a segment, furthermore, a company could choose one particular target market. Study whether the chosen target market are actually profitable one. Understand that target market: their character, needs, lifestyle, and issues, then come up with product or service that fulfill a particular need, or solve their problem. 

POSITIONING AND DIFFERENCIATION 

Positioning, which is the process of setting a product to have a clear, distinctive and desirable place compare to its competitor in the minds of target customers, really depends on the differentiation. Because only through differentiating the product, a company could create a superior customer value, thus we can achieve the desired position in customers’ minds. 

As the example, let's take a look at the war betwen Coca Cola and Pepsi.

Pepsi were doing a massive marketing programs, such as the Pepsi Challenge taste test advertising and the “choice of a new generation” positioning, Pepsi segmented the market on a very simplistic basis, using an attitude and loyalty segmentation approach.

Pepsi segmented the market into three consumer segments only, namely:

1. Consumers with a positive attitude to the Coke brand and 100% loyal to Coke

2. Consumers with a positive attitude to the Pepsi brand and 100% loyal to Coke

3. Consumers with a positive attitude to both Coke and Pepsi, with loyalty to both brands, but switching their purchases between these two brands from time to time

The third point is the key to the market war which leads to Coca Cola thought that they were losing the market and made a decision to launch the New Coke decision in 1985. 

Prior to that, Coca Cola spent around $200 million also Pepsi spending $150 million to fight those 50% of cola drinkers that would switch between the Coke and Pepsi brands. 

As mentioned earlier, Coca Cola thought they were losing the market to Pepsi, then changed their formula. After that the new formula was named the New Coke. The result shows that it was a bad move, Coca Cola read the maket wrong, and resulted in a lot of disapproval and disappointment of Cocal Cola's loyal customers.

This situation was milking by Pepsi with the modification of their target market and started to targeting loyal Coke drinkers approximately 25% of the market. 

As a result of this shift in target market selection, Pepsi positioned their product as the main reason that Coca-Cola replaced their classic Coca-Cola with New Coke. 

The changed in Pepsi positioning view very much shows in two ads they ran. These two ads targeted at youth and elderly demographic, with both demographic expressing their dissappointment to the change of "My" Coke, as something that is very dear to their heart. Then emphasized with I know why.

Another example, here is the Marketing Strategy of my Tshirt business.